Arc II, Chapter 19: The Ghost Collector

My Oblivious Bystander strategy was running thin. Even with the darkness that could conceal the enemy from my gaze and all of my efforts to provide cover, we were in danger. Our strongest hope was that Carousel had other plans for us.

I had watched my other uses of Oblivious Bystander on the red wallpaper before using Director’s Monitor. Usually, Carousel used ten or so seconds of the footage it shot. Just enough to show me at risk and then it would cut to something else. By the time the camera came back to me, the threat was practically gone.

The exception was the time I used eating cereal as cover against Ranger Danger. Carousel showed almost that whole scene combined with the murder I was ignoring. I looked like a lucky idiot.

The question was, when would we go Off-Screen? When would our pursuer lose interest?

I pictured the scene in my mind, trying to will it into reality. I rush to check on Antoine, the monster watches from afar, and CUT. The camera goes back to Isaac or Bobby or Dina…

But there was no cut.

It was only then that I remembered that I was in a storyline with Outsiders and a Wallflower. They were not really scene stealers. Dina was probably using her trope to stay Off-Screen. I doubted Isaac was doing anything too interesting as a Comedian and Constance was just researching.

Antoine and I were probably the most interesting characters at that moment. The plot was not moving forward anywhere else.

The monster was behind us by twenty yards or so. Surely that meant it wasn’t about to go in for an attack? We weren’t even next on the priority list.

Why continue to watch us if it wasn’t going to attack?

As I pondered all of this, my heart nearly beating out of my chest, my muscles sore from carrying much of Antoine’s weight, something changed.

A message appeared on the red wallpaper.

“Straight downhill past this tree. Bunch of dead people. Actual bodies, not ghosts. Off-Screen the whole time. Watching from the shadows. Son is scared. -Dina”

Dina had the ability to post messages for her allies on the red wallpaper with her Pen Pal trope. The only catch was that the messages were tied to a specific location. This was the first time she had used it to my knowledge.

I recognized this location as the place we had split up. It made sense she had chosen that spot.

I couldn’t go check out the bodies she was talking about. It would be hard to justify that change in direction. Plus, that was a hard right turn that would inevitably lead to me seeing the monster in the darkness behind us.

We had to keep going uphill.

Off-Screen. Finally.

As we continued walking, I could still catch glimpses of something behind us in the corner of my eye. I still heard the occasional laugh over my music.

Was it just going to stick around even without the camera? The Chase Scene status wasn’t even lit because Oblivious Bystander prevented that.

Was this thing just watching us out of curiosity?

For five minutes it kept watching us as we climbed upward.

We kept up the ruse of me helping Antoine the whole time just in case, but I got this feeling that Oblivious Bystander had deactivated long ago. We should have been safe.

And then the creature quickened its pace. It was running behind us. With Antoine Hobbled and me carrying him, we weren’t going to be able to outrun it.

That didn’t actually matter.

It ran past us. Right past us, practically nudging me out of the way as it went.

What I saw was difficult to describe. It was the type of thing only possible in dreams. It was a man—a ghost to be more precise. He was dressed in a blue button-up shirt and a yellow neon vest. He wore a tool belt. He was probably in his early thirties, slightly overweight, dark hair, unshaven. He was an electrician to be more exact if the lightning-shaped burns on his face, neck, and shirt meant what I thought they meant.

He turned his head to me as he passed. The man himself looked confused, lost. It almost looked like he wanted to ask me a question.

I felt an aura as he passed that chilled my blood.

Black thread wound around and through the man’s skin all over. It looked like he had been in some sort of industrial sewing machine accident.

Behind him, there was something. I couldn’t describe it any better than that. There was a dark, blurry figure. I felt like I could see more if I just craned my neck, but it was impossible. This guy passed me and the figure still looked like he was standing behind the electrician. The logic made no sense.

A woman’s hand stuck out from behind the man as he passed me and waved. Then another arm shot out, again, waving. The arms were dead. That was scary enough, even in the moonlight they looked pale.

That wasn’t the thing that scared me though.

I hadn’t been able to see the poster for the ghost who had waved at me when I played the Ten Second Game. I didn’t know if that was a trope effect or if I just didn’t see them clearly enough.

I saw these three on the red wallpaper though.

The electrician was a Wandering Spirit like J.T. Guzman had been. Same tropes. I didn’t catch his name because I was distracted.

The first arm was from a woman named Marla. She was called a “Presence” on the red wallpaper.

Her tropes were not even close to being the worst part. One detail I often skimmed over when analyzing enemies was the poster itself. I mostly focused on the nameplate underneath which often contained a description of what the enemy was.

The poster itself was usually not that informative because most of its text was usually something like “So and So is The Bad Guy in The Horror Movie Title.”

It just wasn’t the information I usually needed because the nameplate had all the important stuff like Plot Armor. Plus, the smaller trope posters usually took most of my attention.

Whatever the case: the poster was usually not that important other than for getting a better look at the enemy.

Marla’s poster showed her floating in the shadows behind a door in an old house at night. Spooky. Not important.

But the text itself was important.

“Marla Keen is a Presence in The Fixer Upper.”

I stopped and reread it. The Fixer Upper?

The other arm didn’t belong to Marla. It belonged to someone called Newscaster (Dusty). I didn’t see his tropes. I wasn’t looking at them. I saw an image of him on fire.

“Newscaster (Dusty) is a Haunting Vision in They Never Sleep…”

Antoine and I stopped in our tracks and watched as the electrician and the many entities behind him continued up the path.

I never saw the shadowy figure on the red wallpaper. It was shielded somehow. Perhaps that was why it hid behind things.

When it was out of view, I asked Antoine, “Did you see that?”

“That’s the thing that killed Kimberly,” he said. “It had a hundred arms.”

“Killed Cassie too. Remotely,” I said.

Antoine drew a deep breath. “It could have killed me. It didn’t. Maybe because of Plot Armor, I don’t know. It just played with me. It broke my leg. Snapped it in half On-Screen and one of the ghosts told me I wasn’t ‘going to walk that off.’”

That was worrying. Antoine’s Walk It Off trope would allow him to recover from his Hobbled status, but that wasn’t going to work if the audience saw it get visibly shattered.

“It can see our tropes,” I said.

Antoine nodded. “That’s what I figure.”

“Did you look at the ghosts on the red wallpaper?” I asked.